Blog 4: Museum of Jurassic Technology - Anya




The Museum of Jurassic Technology has all the ingredients of a traditional museum; it is dark,  it consists of a maze of exhibits presented in glass cases, and every display has some information detailing in some way what it is that you are seeing. Not to mention the feeling of boredom that cannot help but wash over you as you enter the first exhibit and prepare to learn about something you should know about. The thing about this Museum is that the further into the maze of dimly lit displays you go, the less like a museum it is. The outside of the building itself is more of a facade than an indicator of what you are about to experience. The single building that stands in the middle of the block on Venice Boulevard does not make it easy to comprehend that a rooftop dove garden and a two-story room with an interior copula are just on the other side of the door.


The farther into the Museum I went, the more I felt like I was getting lost in an illusion of reality. Every exhibit seemed as it were just as much false as it were true. By this, I mean, it felt more like I was being told a story, and it was my choice if I chose to believe it or not.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology diverges from being a presentation of science and becomes more of a representation of science. In the bazaar and incredibly narrow content, we can look at the Museum as a whole as an art experience. In other words, rather than being a hoax or being wrong, these exhibits explore both the illusion of history and the art of invention. The Museum plays with the idea of perception in many ways, from the building itself to the actual optical illusions that exist within many of the exhibits. The exhibits are an exploration and do not rely on truth alone, which means it does not matter if they are untrue. I found that the more time that I spent with the exhibits, the more truth I discovered in them.

The Museum had several exhibits based on the work and research of Athanasius Kircher. Kircher represents the general theme of the Museum, he was many things from a philosopher, and inventor to a composer an historian, among many other things. Perhaps most notable in the exhibits on Kircher are Kircher's experiments with magnets. The bell wheel, a self-propelling musical instrument, and A Magnetic Oracle both demonstrate the limits of the function of magnetics through Kirthcers experiments, and they are just two of the many extraordinary exhibits that make us question what science and technology really are.
In the case of The Museum of Jurassic technology it seems the best way to understand the exhibits is through several different lenses including art, science, technology, illusion, and history because the Museum itself is not presenting one idea, but a collection of ideas.


Work Cited:
The Museum of Jurassic Technolgy
http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/kircher/oracle.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

JPL Visit 2

On our second trip to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus, the majority of the day was focused on the tree of life project being run by the arts team. We had many of our questions answered about the project, and witnessed first-hand the process the team takes in generating and refining their projects based on the research and findings of the NASA scientists. My main question in regards to the tree of life dealt with how the team planned to create a cube-sat which had the ability to last the duration of the project, 200 years, since no such thing has ever been done before. My favorite brainstorming session activity was writing down every question we had about the project on sticky notes and putting them up on the wall. I wish our questions had all been answered because I think the project is still very early on and a lot of people had really great questions to ask. We briefly viewed a few of the things we had seen during the first visit, including the clean room with the more-develop...
Read more

Blog #7- Sammy Keane

Image
Sammy Keane Blog #7  Since I was unable to attend the second JPL field trip due to unfortunate events, I found myself looking throughout NASA’s dense website. Juno, NASA’s mission to Jupiter, really stood out to me. Launched on August 5, 2011, the goal of this mission was to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that’s observations will lead to a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and planetary systems discovered around other stars (eyes on the solar system). In addition to that, Juno would look for solid planetary core, map its magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, and finally observe auroras (nasa.gov). Juno did not arrive at Jupiter until July 4th of 2016. Reading into Mission Juno allowed me to understand more about Jupiter, a planet that I before knew nothing about. For example, written on October 24,19, data from Juno has helped scientists discover that the swirling ban...
Read more

Blog #7: JPL -Sophie Ungless

Image
The majority of our time during this visit to JPL consisted of working with the A-Team to go over the Tree of Life project, which we were introduced to during our first visit last month. The last time we learned about it, I left feeling really confused about exactly what the project was and how it has relevance, so being able to inquire more on this trip was helpful. That being said, though, I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around what the goal of the mission is. It's clear that they were inspired by how we can eventually create a mission that has the ability to arrive at Proxima B, and the drive behind the Tree of Life is this idea of time and longevity. However, the team still doesn't seem clear about how the information they gain from this project can be applied to a future mission involving Proxima B. Or if they do know, they aren't effectively articulating it to the general public, which I believe is going to be vital for keeping interest in the 200 year ...
Read more